


A Proper Marriage

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Secret Marriage, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 14:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4628187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft and Irene meet at her cottage in Sussex after she nearly loses her head to reacquaint themselves; after all, it’s not very often that a husband nearly loses his wife twice in the span of a year. But Mycroft’s suggestion that they turn their informal marriage into a more proper one is surprising and, it turns out, something that pleases Irene very much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Proper Marriage

**Author's Note:**

> So here is another fic in my "Thirteen Fluffy Fics With Thirteen Ships" challenge. I've always adored the idea that Mycroft and Irene are secretly married and so this is another fic in that vein. No prompt for this, just something from my own imagination. Hope you enjoy!

They didn’t meet often. It was always discretely, in some dark corner of a café or some unpopular part of a public garden. On some occasions they didn’t even meet anywhere in London; they would meet in other cities, in other countries. The world at large could not know of their connection to each other. It would be a disaster of epic proportions if the world found out that the infamous Woman had a husband.

A husband who worked for the British government, in a supposedly minor position, but one that had more power than most people could ever dream of.

A husband who had an annoyingly astute little brother who had made his name as the world’s only consulting detective.

A husband, it turned out, who was not happy his wife had gotten mixed up with and almost beheaded by a group of Middle Eastern terrorists.

She was still pretending to be dead, which made moments with her husband much harder these days. They didn’t have an overtly physical relationship, which suited her just fine; the moments that _were_ physical were quite passionate and enough to sate her for months. Mycroft understood that what she had gotten from her clients wasn’t a release of a sexual sort. It was stress release. What he gave her…that was all the pleasure she needed. And as she was a firm believer in delayed gratification, she could wait a long time between moments of pleasure.

He had summoned her back to London and she had said no, suggesting they meet in Sussex instead, in the cottage she had kept under a different name. It had been the cottage her mother had lived in when she was a girl, and it was important to her that it stayed in her family, even if she was the last of her family. Perhaps if Sherlock ever settled down, now that he knew the truth about her and his brother, she would give the cottage to him and his family for when he left London. Mycroft agreed after some hesitation and so she was bustling around, preparing dinner for them both.

He let himself in with his key and she turned, watching as he came into the cottage. “Terrorists, Irene? Really?” he asked when he came into full view.

“Well, it was unexpected, but your brother handled it well enough,” she said, opening the oven door to check on the chicken she was roasting. She knew her husband’s dietary habits. He was on a low fat, high protein diet right now. If he indulged in anything tonight, aside from perhaps some time canoodling with his wife, it might be a glass of dry white wine. “I’m sorry he had to learn the truth about us that way.”

“He figured it out when he saw my reaction to your demands,” Mycroft said with a wry smile.

“You know, one day it will come out,” she said. “That we’re married. It’s too big a secret to keep.”

“We’ve been keeping it for twelve years,” he pointed out. “Quite well, it seems, for the most part. At the moment only my assistant, your assistant and my brother know.”

“Well, it helps that I married you under my birth name,” she said with a small smile. “But back to what you said when you came in, it was a small misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion. I would love to say I could have settled it myself but I think I was out of my league. But it all started with a discussion of the Koran.”

Mycroft shook his head, a slightly amused smile on his face. “I do believe you have never backed down from a challenge, and you never will if you can help it.”

“But that’s why you love me so much,” she said with an impish smile. She pulled the chicken out of the oven and then set it on the stovetop. “Go sit at the table. How long do I have you for this time?”

He moved to the kitchen table. “A week.”

“I actually get you for an entire week?” she asked, surprised.

“It’s not often I find out my supposedly dead wife nearly lost her head,” he said quietly. “I would like to spend time reacquainting myself with her, and so I managed to clear an entire week to do so.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do with an entire week,” she teased. She transferred the chicken and the vegetables she’d been steaming to serving dishes and then began bringing them to the table. “I have a lemon yoghurt sauce to put over the chicken and the asparagus, if your diet can accommodate that.”

“I can make an allowance for that,” he said. She went back to the stovetop and then put some of the sauce into a gravy dish and brought it to the table. “I keep forgetting that you enjoy cooking.”

“Well, we’ve never had a _real_ marriage,” she said, beginning to serve him. “I expect if we had, you would have learned."

“Have you ever wanted one?” he asked, looking up.

She paused in what she was doing. “There are times I have thought about it. About what it would be like to be in your home every night, to be there when you go to sleep and next to you when you wake up. To take your breakfast with you and make you dinner each evening. To share your bed and please you whenever I want, whenever you ask. But you don’t think that would suit either of us, do you?”

“I’ve started to wonder,” he said quietly.

She stared at him with wide eyes. “Mycroft Reginald Holmes, are you asking me to have a _proper_ marriage with you? Where we live together and you refer to me in public as your wife and I refer to you as my husband?”

He nodded. “You’ll have to have a miraculous resurrection, of course. And I know my parents will demand a proper wedding, as they weren’t invited to the first one, so we’ll have to go through all that pomp and circumstance. And I would like to court you. I gather you deserve that much.”

After a moment a grin started to cross her face, growing so wide she was worried she might actually hurt herself. “So you want to do things the way it was supposed to be done the first time,” she said.

“Without discounting the last thirteen years we’ve known each other, yes,” he said, reaching over to grasp her hand. “Irene, I do love you, even if I’m not the best at showing it. And I think I need to be better at showing it. I’ve nearly lost you twice in the last year and that’s twice too often. If we’re going to be married we should actually act as though we’re married.”

Irene let go of his hand and then framed his face with her hands. “Then Mycroft, I will gladly marry you all over again,” she said quietly before leaning in and kissing him softly. He covered her hands with his as he kissed her back and she relaxed into the kiss. She knew that this was a new beginning for them, one that could lead to all sorts of possibilities, and she was quite eager to see what happened next.


End file.
